


Astronomy 101

by Empatheia



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-09
Updated: 2007-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empatheia/pseuds/Empatheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pros and cons of moral destitution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astronomy 101

He probably doesn't know.

There is, of course, always the possibility that he _does_ know and does it anyway just to be awful. That would not surprise Tezuka in the least.

"I will expect you to be there at midnight sharp. If you are late, I will make you run two hundred laps. No excuses."

"That's a new school record," Echizen says with a grin. "This must be really important."

Tezuka turns his glasses to the sun so that his eyes will become unreadable. He is not given to overt expression, but he knows Echizen can read him like a book with only a half-second sideways glance at his eyes. It's unsettling and very inconvenient. "Don't be late. And be careful on your way up, there are strange people out at night these days."

" _Bu_ chou," says Echizen reproachfully.

Tezuka abruptly changes his mind, something that only happens very, very rarely. Echizen knows exactly what he's doing, and he is awful. To cover his disorientation, he coughs and adjusts his glasses, uncomfortably aware the whole time that Echizen is most likely not fooled in the least. In fact, he is probably laughing silently at Tezuka.

He is _not_ going to blush.

"I know you can take care of yourself. But still, please be careful."

"I'll be fine, buchou. Quit worrying or you'll get wrinkles." Then Echizen tilts his cap forwards to not-quite-hide his not-quite-smile and saunters off.

Tezuka wonders, not for the first time, where on earth his brain has gone off to.

**x**

Echizen is late.

Tezuka had not really expected anything else, but he is now faced with an interesting dilemma: he can either make Echizen run the laps as he'd threatened, or figure out how to set his watch back in the dark. He can't hold the flashlight and fiddle with the knobs at the same time.

And it certainly won't do to be lenient without a good excuse.

Then Echizen arrives (seventeen minutes past midnight) and Tezuka forgets completely about the time and laps and really, just about everything.

"...When did you...?" he asks quietly, trying very hard not to let his voice betray him. Internally, he is quite proud of the cool look he somehow manages to pull off despite the rampant display of disrespect standing in front of him.

"When did I what?"

"My jacket. When."

Echizen tosses him a trademark smirk and spreads the beautiful black suede jacket by its pockets. "Oh, this? A while ago. After we all went for dinner downtown."

Tezuka swallows his minor outrage. "You stole my jacket while I was drunk. _Echizen."_ He realizes a second too late what a stupid thing to say that was, and steels himself.

" _Bu_ chou," Echizen rejoinders instantly, with a glint of triumph in his eyes at the way Tezuka hurriedly turns away and looks at the moon instead of him. "If you want to blame someone, blame Fuji-sempai. I didn't make you drink all that. And I didn't steal it. You gave it to me. You said it would be 'detrimental to the well-being of the team if the pillar caught a cold.' Unquote."

Tezuka really is going to make him run those two hundred laps, or better yet, run until he passes out and is therefore _forced_ to stop smirking at him.

He suddenly realizes he has no idea what to say next. The jacket is far too large for Echizen and drapes almost to his knees, but instead of drowning in it he manages to make it look like a new fashion statement. Mountain-climbing chic, or something.

Tezuka does _not_ find it attractive. He doesn't. Honest.

"So, why am I up here in the middle of the night, buchou? You never told me."

Instead of answering, because he still doesn't really trust his voice, Tezuka gestures to the patch of grass next to him. It's a little chilly at the top of the mountain, but not unbearable. And the sky is crystal clear, as he'd hoped.

Echizen gives him a Look, but sits down and leans back on his hands. The jacket falls open around his stomach— Why has he only fastened one button of it, halfway up his chest? That's impractical, and it's not healthy to leave his stomach exposed with only that thin red top to cover it. Tezuka is not going to fix it. He is going to _ignore_ it.

He points to the sky, tracing the points of light with his finger. "Do you see those two bright stars in a line?"

"Yeah. What about them?"

"If you follow both of them up in parallel lines, you find four more fainter stars that make a rectangle with the two bright ones."

"...Yeah."

"That's Gemini. It's one of the easiest Zodiac constellations to spot."

"... _Bu_ chou."

Tezuka winces, but not enough to be visible in the dark. Two hundred laps and a tall glass of Inui's latest concoction. No excuses. "Yes, Echizen?"

"You brought me up here to look at the stars. In the middle of the night. When I could be sleeping." His voice is full of reproach and not a little disbelief, but Tezuka knows him better than to think it's real.

He smiles, a millimeter of motion with the corner of his mouth, and lets out a deep breath. "Yes."

There is blessed silence for a minute. Tezuka can hear the wind sweeping around the massive sides of the mountain, whistling through the trees lower down as it goes. It really is a lovely night.

" _Bu_ chou," Echizen whispers, drawing it out longer than strictly necessary. This time there's only wonder in his voice, and a little something else that Tezuka refuses to think about.

Two hundred laps, Inui juice, and ball-fetching for a week. No excuses.

He clears his throat and does not look at Echizen. "Do you see that cluster of seven stars?"

"No," says Echizen.

Tezuka frowns. They aren't hard to spot. He looks over at Echizen — mistake number one. The boy is sitting upright and stretching his arms over his head so that that coat's one fastened button is in danger of ripping loose and the foolish little red top has ridden up above the waistline of his jeans. Echizen's navel has taken center stage in Tezuka's vision. Tezuka can't figure out why seeing it like this is different from seeing it in the locker room or during a tennis match. Then he realizes that it isn't really, he's just usually distracted enough that not paying attention is an option. It isn't right now.

He snaps his head back to the stars and thanks them fervently that Echizen is not a mind-reader, perceptive though he is. He points at the cluster of stars he's trying to persuade Echizen to notice. "Those ones."

"I can't see where you're pointing from here, the angle is off."

Ridiculous! And he _has_ to know it. Echizen is a master of calculating angles, he'd never be able to do half of what he does if he wasn't. And he's only sitting two feet away. It would be a simple matter to readjust the line of sight from...

He doesn't get to analyze it anymore than that, because now Echizen is sitting approximately -1.4 inches away from him, which means that there isn't really any 'away' about it.

"Oh, those ones," he says innocently.

It's a variation on the oldest trick in the book. Tezuka should dump him on his rear in the dirt — _But the jacket!_ his mind protests — and go build a fire. Or something.

The fact that five minutes later, he still hasn't done anything remotely resembling 'something' is rather worrying to him.

Echizen radiates heat even in the high-altitude chill. Tezuka seizes on the convenient excuse not to move. It's cold, they should share warmth. All the wilderness survival guidebooks say so. He steadfastly ignores the fact that it isn't that cold and that they're hardly 'surviving in the wilderness.' The broad, publicly-maintained path is thirty feet away.

Still.

"Those are the Pleiades," he tells Echizen to break the silence.

"Okay."

"And that big V... like so... that's Taurus."

"Okay."

"And—"

" _Bu_ chou."

Tezuka chokes on his tutorial. "...Yes, Echizen?"

Said individual stares up at him with bottomless hazel-gold eyes and makes a sour face at him. "Would it be all right for you to not talk? Just for a while."

That's perfectly all right since Tezuka has no idea what to say now anyway. He still has no idea what he was thinking when he invited — or rather, ordered — Echizen up here for a star-gazing session. It's ridiculous and has ominously romantic overtones, and he really has no sane, logical explanation for it at all.

Echizen is leaning on him now, tucking his thin shoulder into the gap between Tezuka's arm and side and resting his forehead against Tezuka's neck.

Tezuka wonders when that happened and why every time Echizen exhales, he gets goosebumps. And why he suddenly can't remember what that big ladle-shaped string of stars in the sky is called. He's known that one since he was old enough to sit up without falling over, but he couldn't think of its name to save his life.

"Buchou. This is nice."

Tezuka swivels his head to look down at Echizen, except that really isn't a wise idea because now their faces are all of 0.07 inches apart and he really isn't going to kiss him.

He isn't. _Isn't._

Except that, unfortunately, he most certainly is, and he can feel Echizen smirking against his mouth as though he'd planned this all along. It wouldn't surprise Tezuka in the least if he had.

...Had he?

The answer to that pressing question is going to have to wait a minute or several, because Echizen has shifted himself into an upright position and has Tezuka's face in his hands. He is now staring at him with a most peculiar look on his face.

"Echizen," Tezuka says, for the lack of something better to say. It hadn't been the greatest kiss. It had been awkward and uncomfortable and there had been entirely too many teeth involved, but it had still undeniably been a kiss. He has no idea what to think of that, except perhaps _again_ and _please._

...He is going to make _himself_ run laps. Until he passes out and conveniently forgets all about every immoral thing he'd thought about doing in the last ten seconds. And preferably every immoral thought he's had ever in regards to Echizen, because there have been rather a lot of them and many of them might possibly earn him a year or two in the lake of fire. Each.

Suddenly he recognizes the strange look in Echizen's eyes. It is the same one he'd worn at that disastrous beach volleyball tournament after picking himself up out of the sand. It is the look that says he isn't used to being bad at things, even the first time he tries them, and is nonplussed with the discovery that he does, in fact, suck at something.

Echizen's hands are like firebrands on Tezuka's face. The arms of his glasses are pressing uncomfortably into his temples. His back is protesting at the oddly twisted position he is sitting in.

At least he isn't cold.

And it's fine in any case because Echizen is kissing him again, more carefully this time. Teeth hardly make an appearance at all, except on one or two much nicer occasions involving Tezuka's lower lip.

He pushes himself upright in order to free up his hands for burying in Echizen's hair. For a boy who probably cares about hair-care approximately as much as he does about sports other than tennis, it is very soft and healthy. Also, it has the added bonus of being just long enough to make a wonderful handhold for the purpose of angling their heads to fit together better.

Echizen unexpectly runs his fingernails down Tezuka's spine, and Tezuka briefly contemplates the pros and cons of moral destitution. Then the choice is taken away entirely when Echizen drags his fingernails slowly back up, this time inside his shirt.

He can't seem to close his eyes. They are riveted to the ragged arc of shadows Echizen's eyelashes make on his cheeks. They are not exceptional eyelashes, being short and coarse and uneven, but they belong to Echizen and they are two inches away down Tezuka's direct line of sight. That makes them exceptional, in an odd and morally destitute way.

A flash of light in the corner of his vision somehow manages to tear his full attention away from what Echizen is doing to the sensitive ridges of his palate with his tongue.

"A meteorite," he says dizzily. "Make a wish."

Echizen sighs and sits back. "Fine. But only if you tell me what yours is."

"It wouldn't work if I told you, Echizen."

" _Bu_ chou."

Tezuka grimaces and lies back so that the moon glints off his glasses conveniently. "No."

"Bu _chou!_ "

Three hundred laps. Inui Juice. Ball-fetching. And if he says it one more time, team laundry for the next month.

"Bu _choouu_..."

Tezuka caves, as he knew he was going to. "It has to do with the sunrise."

There is a pause, in which Echizen stares at him with his copyrighted 'what the hell' eyes. " _Bu_ chou. That's kind of... I was going to say lame but I hate the affiliation to Shishido. It's weird."

"It's more than just 'the sunrise,' Echizen. That's not a wish at all."

"Well, tell me the rest of it! I swear I'll keep you up here until you do!"

Tezuka bites back a helpless half-smile. "Well, there you go."

"...What."

He refuses to say anything more, only smiles his half-smile — really, it's more of a quarter- or even an eighth-smile, but it's wide enough for him — serenely upwards until Echizen figures it out a moment later. He knows Echizen's going to say It again, and then he's going to sit up, pin Echizen to the grass and kiss him senseless. It's the longest five seconds of his life before Echizen speaks.

_"...Buchou."_

He really can't be blamed, he thinks in the last half-second before contact. It's Echizen's fault for being such a beautiful, insufferable brat.

And then they collide and Echizen isn't going to have the chance to say anything for a long, long while.

**X**

 


End file.
